From the Classical Soup Kitchen to the Irish Famine

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Tom Scott-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Natural Laws ◽  
Irish Famine ◽  
Soup Kitchen ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Nutritional Science ◽  
Urban Underclass

This chapter describes how the soup kitchen, based on an Elizabethan model but subsequently scaled up to meet the vast needs of a new urban underclass, became a standardized technology of relief by the middle of the nineteenth century. It returns to Alexis Soyer as well as a man called Count Rumford, who brought the soup kitchen into the modern age. Count Rumford's commitment to everyday reform generated a new word, “rumfordizing,” which meant improving and refining something in accordance with natural laws. In the 1790s he started to rumfordize the soup kitchen. With Rumford's help, the soup kitchen developed to meet the scale of need in urban areas, culminating in Alexis Soyer's “soup-shop of soup-shops” in Dublin. Rumford's vision of the soup kitchen, however, acted as a pivot between the classical and modern periods, before nutritional science emerged onto the scene.

scholarly journals The Chemistry of Famine: Nutritional Controversies and the Irish Famine, c.1845–7

2012 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 444-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Miller
Keyword(s):  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Social Value ◽  
Medical Practitioners ◽  
The Public ◽  
Irish Famine ◽  
Soup Kitchen ◽  
Nutritional Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Central Board

AbstractThe activities of Irish medical practitioners in relieving the impact of the Irish Famine (c.1845–52) have been well documented. However, analysis of the function of contemporary medico-scientificideasrelating to food has remained mostly absent from Famine historiography. This is surprising, given the burgeoning influence of Liebigian chemistry and the rising social prominence of nutritional science in the 1840s. Within this article, I argue that the Famine opened up avenues for advocates of the social value of nutritional science to engage with politico-economic discussion regarding Irish dietary, social and economic transformation. Nutritional science was prominent within the activities of the Scientific Commission, the Central Board of Health and in debates regarding soup kitchen schemes. However, the practical inefficacy of many scientific suggestions resulted in public associations being forged between nutritional science and the inefficiencies of state relief policy, whilst emergent tensions between the state, science and the public encouraged scientists in Ireland to gradually distance themselves from state-sponsored relief practices.

Figures of Authority in Nineteenth-Century Ireland

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
First Century ◽  
Western World ◽  
Catholic Priests ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Emotional Politics ◽  
Print Cultures

This interdisciplinary collection investigates the forms that authority assumed in nineteenth-century Ireland, the relations they bore to international redefinitions of authority, and Irish contributions to the reshaping of authority in the modern age. At a time when age-old sources of social, political, spiritual and cultural authority were eroded in the Western world, Ireland witnessed both the restoration of older forms of authority and the rise of figures who defined new models of authority in a democratic age. Using new comparative perspectives as well as archival resources in a wide range of fields, eleven chapters show how new authorities were embodied in emerging types of politicians, clerics and professionals, and in material extensions of their power in visual, oral and print cultures. Their analyses often eerily echo twenty-first-century debates about populism, the suspicion towards scholarly and intellectual expertise, and the role of new technologies and forms of association in contesting and recreating authority. Several contributions highlight the role of emotion in the way authority was deployed by figures ranging from O’Connell to Catholic priests and W.B. Yeats, foreshadowing the perceived rise of emotional politics in our own age. This volume stresses that many contested forms of authority that now look ‘traditional’ emerged from 19th-century crises and developments, as did the challenges that undermine authority.

scholarly journals “They Live in Indifference Together”: Marriage Mobility in Zeeland, The Netherlands, 1796–1922

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (S13) ◽  
pp. 247-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hilde Bras ◽  
Jan Kok
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Class ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Life Course ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Mixed Marriage ◽  
Government Report ◽  
Logistic Regressions ◽  
The Life Course

This article investigates developments in and antecedents of socially mixed marriage in the rural Dutch province of Zeeland during the long nineteenth century, taking individual and family histories, community contexts, and temporal influences into account. A government report of the 1850s said of Zeeland that farmers and workers lived “in indifference together”. However, our analysis of about 163,000 marriage certificates reveals that 30 to 40 per cent of these rural inhabitants continued to marry outside their original social class. Multivariate logistic regressions show that heterogamous marriages can be explained first and foremost by the life-course experiences of grooms and brides prior to marriage. Previous transitions in their occupational careers (especially to non-rural occupations for grooms, and to service for brides), in their migration trajectories (particularly moves to urban areas), and changes in the sphere of personal relationships (entering widowhood, ageing) are crucial in understanding marriage mobility.

‘Stirring and advancing times’: Landlords, Agents and Improvement on the Castle Howard Estate, 1826–66

2018 ◽  
pp. 19-38
Author(s):  
David Gent
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Rural Communities ◽  
Technical Change ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Social Economic ◽  
Local Population ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Social ◽  
Moral Condition

This essay explores the career of John Henderson, land agent to the Earls of Carlisle at their Castle Howard estate in Yorkshire between 1827 and the late 1860s. In recent scholarship, historians have increasingly begun to appreciate the importance of land agents in nineteenth-century rural life. It is now evident that agents, as intermediaries between landowners, their tenants and the wider local population, were deeply involved in the social relationships of rural communities. Making use of the voluminous and well-preserved estate records, the essay complements such studies by emphasising the multi-faceted nature of Henderson’s role in the Castle Howard district. It will particularly focus on Henderson’s role as a facilitator of social, economic and technical change. Under the active encouragement of the 7th Earl of Carlisle, a noted liberal politician and reformer, Henderson not only introduced a range of agricultural improvements to the estate, but also a large number of projects aimed at improving the social, economic and moral condition of its population. In doing so, the essay shows that landed estates - and land agents - may have played no less an important part than urban areas in the Victorian culture of 'progress': in participating in what the 7th Earl described as 'stirring and advancing times'.

scholarly journals Nineteenth Century Urban Labor Precursors of the Mexican Revolution: The Development of an Ideology

1974 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
John M. Hart
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Mexico City ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Labor Movement ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Self Defense ◽  
Urban Labor ◽  
New City

Mexican industrialization, which began during the second half of the nineteenth century, was paralleled by the appearance of an urban labor movement. Industrialization resulted in a sudden concentration of new workers from the countryside in a few urban areas—especially Mexico City. Living conditions for the new city dwellers were generally intolerable and were compounded by chronic economic and political instability. Crowning the laborer's difficulty were the almost impossible working conditions in the new factories. The working class, virtually in self-defense, began to organize. Because the urban labor movement during the last third of the nineteenth century was a prelude to similar and more famous developments during the violent years of the early twentieth century, analysis of its causes, nature, and significance is essential for understanding an important aspect of the Mexican Revolution.

Wired into Nature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Schwoch
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
North America ◽  
Communication Networks ◽  
Great Plains ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Electronic Communication ◽  
Spanish American War ◽  
White House ◽  
Atlantic Seaboard

This book is a study of the telegraph in western North America, concentrating on the latter half of the nineteenth century. A number of distinguished books and articles have been written about the telegraph and the nineteenth-century American experience. For the most part, however, this scholarly work is geographically partial. The standard histories of the American telegraph are stories of the East Coast and the Atlantic Seaboard, the growing Midwest, and service to urban areas. This book looks toward the West. The narrative includes landscapes and ecosystems, meteorology, surveillance, and containment and conflict with Native Americans. Major themes include the high ground, the signal flow, the state secret, and the secure command. Opening with discussion of the first attempts to bring the telegraph to the Trans-Mississippi West, the book concludes with the consolidation of the secure command of electronic communication networks in the White House during the Spanish-American War, detailing the transformation of electronic communication networks from continentalism to globalism. The terrain of the narrative incudes the Great Plains, the Southwest, the Pacific Coast, the Rocky Mountains, the border with Mexico, and the subarctic and arctic areas of North America. This book presents an interpretive approach that centers on environmental, climatological, military, and surveillance issues as key factors in the history of electronic communication networks.

Youth, Generations, and Collective Action in Nineteenth-Century Ireland and Italy

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 934-966 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niall Whelehan
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Young People ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Or Education ◽  
Social Unrest ◽  
Irish Famine ◽  
Great Irish Famine ◽  
Adult Status ◽  
Generational Consciousness

AbstractThis article examines concepts of youth, maturity, and generations in nineteenth-century Ireland and Italy and perceived connections between young people and political and social unrest. I demonstrate that, rather than being consistent, the involvement of younger generations in radicalism was uneven, and varied significantly with historical contexts. I argue that the authorities frequently exaggerated associations between young people and radicalism as a subtle strategy of exclusion, as a means of downgrading the significance of collective action and portraying it as a criminal, emotional, or even recreational matter rather than a political one, a tendency that has often been reinforced in the historiography. Descriptions of youth and maturity should not be understood as merely reflections of age. They were not value-free, and served as indicators of individuals' social standing and political agency or lack thereof. Yet fighting in a rebellion offered an alternative to marriage, owning property, or education for the achievement of “manhood,” or adult status and political agency. The article also investigates how the Great Irish Famine shaped generational consciousness in the second half of the nineteenth century through an analysis of the participants in nationalist and agrarian violence. In all, over four thousand participants in collective action in Ireland and Italy are examined.

scholarly journals Urban and Rural Variants of Pre-industrial Demographic Regimes in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

2013 ◽  
pp. 71-75
Author(s):  
Maria Luiza Marcílio
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
World Economy ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
Old Regime ◽  
Subsistence Economies ◽  
The World ◽  
Preliminary Research ◽  
Demographic Regimes ◽  
Slave Population

Preliminary research in nineteenth-century Brazilian demographic data already indicates patterns different from the Old Regime model formulated for Europe. For Brazil there emerge four demographic regimes, involving degrees of isolation of population, access to natural resources, kinds of work, and relationship to the world economy: 1) subsistence economies; 2) plantation economies; 3) the slave population; and 4) urban areas, mostly ports. The slave population maintained its numbers by steady importation from Africa; the cities, by purchase of slaves and immigration from Europe.

Queering Middle Class Gender in Nineteenth-Century US Theater

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Rodger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
The United States ◽  
Gender Construction ◽  
Narrative Forms

This chapter considers cross-dressed roles in nineteenth-century music-theatrical forms in the United States, and particularly in non-narrative and semi-narrative forms such as minstrelsy, circus, variety, and burlesque. It discusses the origins of cross-dressed roles in English theatrical traditions, as well as connections to similar roles in European opera and operetta. It also considers other kinds of performances present in variety that challenged middle class gender construction of the period, and suggests that variety represented working class gender roles, and humor was found at the expense of hegemonic middle class ideals. This becomes particularly clear in the performances by male impersonators in variety of the 1860s–1880s. By the end of the century the middle class had expanded to include portions of the variety audience, and audiences no longer found the satirical treatment of middle class men funny. This, and growing mainstream recognition of homosexual populations, particularly in urban areas, caused the decline of cross-dressed performance.

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